Anderson Cooper is interviewed by Choire Sicha in the Los Angeles Times, and the CNN anchor talks about the internet and life after the election.

“I miss our nightly meetings with 20 different analysts,” he says. “I was joking with some of them that I feel like we should convene panels in my home on the weekends and go over polls that don’t exist.”

When asked why he doesn’t just “quit your job and start a website,” Cooper says, “I like the immediacy of television. I like going to a frontline, I like going to a story. I like the immediacy and impact of it. There’s a real global impact with CNN.” But also: “I don’t have the energy of Arianna Huffington or Tina Brown.”

After the jump, what Cooper doesn’t “quite understand” about “other networks”…

(image by Carolyn Cole of the Los Angeles Times)

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Within the next few days, CNN is expecting a big response from several corporations and individuals who may not be very happy with the way they are portrayed in the upcoming two-hour documentary, “Planet in Peril: Battle Lines.”

“I expect them to, in a perfect world, to say ‘we weren’t really aware of what’s going on, but we’re going to do something about it,’” EP David Doss tells TVNewser following the premiere of “Planet in Peril” last night at the Time Warner Center. “Or I think we’ll probably hear from the attorneys from other companies. That’s the range.”

The “Planet in Peril” series enters its second year tomorrow at 9pmET, and puts its three correspondents, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Anderson Cooper and Lisa Ling (and producer Charlie Moore, pictured) in a series of dangerous situations, in order to report on environmental crises around the world.

There’s Cooper swimming with great white sharks, without a cage. Gupta in a Peruvian town where 98% of the children are poisoned by the pollutants in the air. Ling to an African separatist organization firing guns haphazardly while she reports just yards a way. In total, the reporting takes the viewer to 11 countries and four continents.

“I didn’t get the sense that there were any limits about what we can do,” Gupta tells us. “It’s a big undertaking.”

Tina Brown, Mo Rocca, Ali Velshi and others made up the audience. But when we heard someone ask what the average person can do to help out during the Q&A session, and turned around to see Survivor: Africa winner Ethan Zohn, we had to ask what brought him to the event.

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Gail Shister
TVNewser Columnist

George Will says he would never do it.

Lou Dobbs calls it “a novel idea” but can’t imagine doing it.

Tucker Carlson says he’d do it in a heartbeat.

Will, Dobbs and Carlson, along with 20-plus other conservatives, were apparently on CBS’s list of potential candidates in fall 2004 for its investigative panel on Memogate, the New York Observer reports.

CBS, of course, eventually selected former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and ex-AP chief Louis Boccardi to pass judgment on Dan Rather – now suing his former employers for $70 million.

Newsweek’s Will, CNN’s Dobbs and MSNBC’s Carlson all say they were never contacted.

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